Peter Jackson: Welshman Brian disarmed the last great TV conflict
What he read took him back to the Drum and Monkey, the pub in Glasgow where England ate enough humble pie for the IRB to end their ex-communication from the newly-formed Six Nations. Some more monkey business, this time over another television deal, brought the old stark raving bonkers stuff back into focus.
Bill Beaumont may have been given the credit for the old-fashioned pint-and-pie diplomacy which saved England’s bacon, but it would not have been saved without Baister’s pragmatic presence as chairman of the RFU. The popular assumption at the time was that the English leader of that most august of English institutions had averted a constitutional crisis without precedent since the advent of international competition.
What few outside his immediate family knew was that the English leader of the RFU happened to be Welsh, a pupil of Lloyd Street School in Llandudno where the young Baister helped the football team win the Llandudno Shield and Cup in 1952-3. “Llandudno born and bred,” he told me in an ever so slightly confessional mood yesterday. “I spent all my life in north Wales until my father died when I was 17 and I went to London to join the police.”
After a distinguished police career during which he received the Queen’s Police medal for his handling of the investigation into the IRA bombing of Warrington in 1993, Baister won election to the RFU Council in 1997. He arrived to find ‘HQ’ on the horns of a television dilemma caused by the Union breaking ranks with the rest of the Five Nations by selling their home matches to Sky.
Instead of sticking to the principle of collective bargaining, the unilateral deal to sell off what the four other home countries regarded as the family jewels guaranteed the RFU £87.5m over five years, figures hitherto unheard of in Test rugby.
It also guaranteed them a heap more trouble which would bring about England’s expulsion.
This week’s news of another unilateral English television deal with the same potential for serious damage brought Baister an overpowering sense of déjà vu. The only difference this time was that the ante had been upped some 70 per cent to £152m.
After one season on the council, Baister went from new boy to chairman in one fell swoop. His victory over the incumbent, Cliff Brittle, meant he had to clean up the monumental mess left by his predecessor’s war on the newly nascent professional clubs. And then there was the greater mess over the RFU’s contentious deal to sell off their bits of what was then the Five Nations and keep the money to themselves.
Had they put every shire horse in the home counties out to graze at Twickenham, the collective manure would not have caused anywhere near the smell which hung over the Five Nations. The rest were outraged. The RFU had dumped on them from a great height and it stank to high heaven.
England’s first expulsion in 1996 ended before it could take effect with assurances from the RFU that the £87.5m would be divvied up and that the other home countries would get their share. When the Celtic Unions accused Twickenham of reneging on the deal, the IRB formally kicked England out for a second time.
Baister, true to his role as honest broker, averted the crisis and the absolute absurdity of the last Five Nations taking place with only Four on board. “Too silly for words,” he says. “And to think the argument dragged on for nearly four years.”
At roughly the same time, the English First Division clubs staged their senseless one-season boycott of Europe. “Financial suicide,” says Baister, suitably outraged. “That was stopped as soon as Tom Walkinshaw took over as the clubs’ chairman. They went straight back in and they’ve stayed in.”
It may not be for much longer. The English and French have given ERC notice to quit with effect from May 2014, hence the new Premier Rugby Ltd deal with BT Vision. Not to be outdone, ERC have also done their own deal, a four-year extension with Sky which conveniently overlooks the fact that by the time it takes effect, England and France will have departed.
Baister speaks with the wisdom of a man who has seen it all before at the closest quarter. “There is an inevitability about this,” he says. “I see it as another attempt by the English Premiership clubs to climb another rung up the ladder – another step in their perceived plan to run the English game.
“They have less of a leg to stand on now than they had in 1998. They have had a professional body to deal with at the RFU since then rather than the butcher, baker and candlestick-maker of the late Nineties. Back then it was a joke.
“The difference with the clubs’ position now is that they have secured the money and they appear to have a long-term television deal. That makes their hand a hell of a lot stronger than it was in the old days.
“ERC is an adjunct of the IRB. As such they don’t have a single idea in their head about how to progress the professional game.
“The RFU will never be a top-class organisation until they get rid of the RFU council. It’s a multi-million pound business and yet you have a council who meet four times a year. The council costs between £2m and £2.25m a year to run. The RFU should be totally run by the professionals.
“I did a paper on that effect and presented it five years ago. I don’t think it ever saw the light of day. At one stage we had 54 committees on the RFU and one of those was a committee to decide the menu at the after-match dinners. We cut the number of committees down to 14. Then it went back up to 17.”
Whether the English clubs’ have enough television money to buy the support of the Welsh regions on top of the French remains to be seen. Brian Baister being happily retired, the RFU’s man from Llandudno has done more than his share of cleaning up someone else’s mess.
